PESTILENCE: The Scent of Roses

by Margaret Brazear

  He could feel the woman's heart beating rapidly, feel her trembling in fear of him but that would not stop him, would not keep him from his intentions. Yes, she was afraid of him. So much the better.

  As soon as the door closed behind them, his fingers gripped her bodice and pulled it down, slipping her arms out of the sleeves and releasing her breasts to his hands and his mouth. The need to hurt her was overpowering. If he could hurt her, he might feel better. He wanted to hurt someone; why not this whore? His fingers closed around her throat, but as they did so he heard that voice again, the sweet, musical voice of Felice: Christopher, please!

  He wanted to hurt the harlot, his rage was out of control and he wanted to tear into her, wanted more than anything to injure her, wanted to leave her bruised and bleeding, just as his heart was bruised and bleeding.

  But if he squinted, she could be Felice. If she could be made to smell of roses, she could be Felice and he had the eerie sensation that Felice was watching him, that she was looking down from Heaven and telling him the woman was innocent, just as she had been innocent.

  As he rolled away from the prostitute, he felt a dart of shame for what he had almost done to her. It was not her fault he had killed the woman he loved. He turned to look at her and saw for the first time the tracks down her face where her tears had washed away the dirt. He had not hurt her, but when she took him to this bed, that is what she expected.

  He got to his feet and pulled his breeches back on, then he took another purse of coins from his belt and tossed them at her as he turned to go.

  “I am sorry,” he murmured, before left her to weep alone.

  ***

  Dennis and Gerald, the younger servant, went out and buried the body of the disobedient Donald. They did not know it was him until they got close and Felice was afraid they might catch the disease from the corpse, but they covered themselves in clothing, including their hands, and dragged him to the pit full of rotting bodies, where they laid him at the edge and rolled his body over with their feet until he fell inside amid the putrid flesh and heaving rats. They filled it in, covering the last of the villagers with earth and said a prayer over them.

  They agreed to take the risk of raiding from the empty homes of the dead villagers. They needed thatch from their hovels to patch up the broken roof of the manor house before the snow came. They chopped up the wooden furniture for firewood and took whatever food and ale there was to be had, little though it was.

  Felice did not know how long they could last like this, but she was determined to stay here undetected at least until her child was born. They were a long way from Waterford Castle, but still she did not feel secure that her husband would not learn of the impending birth of another child, that he would not come and steal this baby from her.

  It was a poor sort of Christmas, but they gathered some holly from the woods and managed to find some meat to make a meal. They sat around the table and drank the communion wine they had stolen from the church, much to Daisy’s chagrin.

  “It is blasphemy, My Lady,” she declared. “I cannot drink it as though it were just ordinary wine.”

  “It is ordinary wine, Daisy,” Felice assured her. “In fact, it is so diluted it is not even that. Do you think the Lord would begrudge us on the occasion of His birth?”

  There was no midnight mass, no service to mark the Lord's birth, but at least they were alive. They made the best of a bad time; there was nothing else they could do.

  The priest had fled long before the last grave was dug in the village and Felice suggested they hold their own services and managed to convince the servants they had no need of a priest, that God was watching them and would provide as long as they did not forget Him.

  The new year came and went, the spring crept in slowly, saving them some firewood at least, and they settled into a routine. The men would go out and catch rabbits for food, and even managed to kill a few birds with a bow and arrows Gerald found in the Steward's house. Daisy and Ruby would prepare them and Felice would help with the cooking. That was a novelty for a lady of the nobility, as was having to let out her gowns to accommodate the new life growing within her. When she was expecting little Christopher, she ordered new gowns to be made, but that sort of luxury was a thing of the past.

  Nobody came near the village, although they often heard hooves and carriage wheels on the road. People were afraid and their fear was all to the good for Lady Waterford and her servants.

  By the time Felice was due to give birth, they had managed to make themselves a little haven away from the world. They survived on rabbit meat mostly, a few vegetables they found growing in the steward's garden and fruit from the now lush forest.

  Felice just wanted to have this baby, then she would worry about what to do next. She was certain now that her father must be dead, or she would have heard from him, which meant she had no one in the world to whom she could turn for help.

  Her husband believed her to be dead, which suited her, and she wondered if he had taken another wife or if he would. How would that work? He may believe he could legally do so, but would the marriage be valid? And why did she care?

  She recalled him telling her that she had been the only woman brave enough to take him on, and she now realised that had not been bravery, that had been sheer foolishness; those other ladies had better instincts than she. But even so, what choice had she been left with? At least she knew replacing her would not be such an easy task.

  "We should find a midwife, My Lady," Daisy kept telling her. "I am scared. Ruby and me, we have no knowledge of birthing."

  "The disease might still be virulent outside this village," Felice said. "If anyone leaves here, they could easily bring it back with them. I had no problems giving birth before and I have heard the second one is easier."

  So Daisy had no choice but to give in to her mistress's wishes and attend her, along with Ruby. The most painful thing about this birth was not the physical opening of her womb but the memory of a man, overjoyed to see his son for the first time, to hold that tiny person in his arms, to kiss his wife and thank her. He was so happy and so grateful and as she recaptured those moments that followed the birth of her son, she found it difficult to believe his father had no love for his mother. Christopher would be just as happy to meet this baby, but he would not be thanking Felice this time. This time he would be stealing the child away, leaving her mother free to stand trial, to hang for murder.

  As fortune would have it, all their prayers were answered and Her Ladyship gave birth to a beautiful, blonde haired little daughter. She named her Rose.

  "Now she needs to be baptised," Daisy insisted. "I will not be persuaded out of that, My Lady. If anything should happen..."

  "Very well, Daisy," Felice replied. "You can go with Dennis and take the child to the church and baptise her yourself."

  "My Lady?"

  "It is the only way it will be done," Felice replied.

  She had little faith in religious practices and dogma. She was supposed to believe that should her child die unbaptised she would not be received into heaven, but that made no sense and she could not see where a merciful God would condemn an innocent babe to the fires of hell.

  She was weary of this life. She was tired of hiding, tired of living in poverty and she wanted more for her daughter. She thought about finding Lord Christopher and throwing herself on his mercy, but she was quite convinced he had no mercy in him. The way he treated her when he saw Thomas that night, the way he was so quick to decide she had murdered a poor peasant woman to get him to herself? Had she never told him she loved him, would he have thought the same?

  ***

  It was more than a year since Christopher discovered the deserted village, the mounds of earth and the trench filled with rotting corpses, and time had done nothing to heal his grief, nothing to make the pain go away. It had done nothing to exorcise the ghost of Felice either. He heard her voice wherever he was, whether in his dreams or awake, her beautiful voice followed
him everywhere.

  He thought he saw her once, as he approached the memorial rose garden. The roses had grown plentifully and were all around the walls of the garden. He often felt sad that Felice would never see it, often thought how she would have loved it, even imagined her smile of delight when she saw what he had done for her.

  But this day he saw her, standing and holding the flowers close to her face, breathing in the fresh smell, he could have sworn he did. But as he hurried toward her, she vanished among the flowers and was gone.

  He bought new vases and ordered roses be placed in her bedchamber. He knew the servants thought he had lost his mind, and perhaps they were right, but he wanted to see that room as it had once been, wanted to smell the flowers in the air.

  As he passed the rose garden he overheard two of his house servants, two women standing and gossiping instead of finding useful work for which he was keeping them. Never in his life had he given a damn what anyone thought of him, least of all his underlings, but hearing the words ‘Lady Felice’, he felt compelled to stay and hear what they had to say.

  “Tis a crying shame, is what I say,” said one woman. “Her Ladyship was the sweetest, gentlest lady in all the world. Always had a kind word for everyone, even remembered all our names. She deserved better than His Lordship, much better.”

  “She did at that, Martha,” came the reply. “How he could have imagined she would hurt another living soul is beyond me. I knew it was a wicked lie when I first heard about it, and if I knew it, why did he not also know it, just tell me that?”

  “Her Ladyship’d still be with us if he hadn’t sent her away. Instead that poor little baby has no mother.”

  Christopher chose that moment to carry on walking toward the women, making sure they heard his approach. He had no wish to hear more, their words were cutting into him like a sword and the fact that they spoke the truth made it worse. There was a time he would have had them flogged for this sort of talk, now he could not even summon a spark of anger. All he felt was shame.

  The pestilence had passed by his estate and the village was so far safe from it, but he was anxious to learn how his neighbours had fared. He heard tales of whole towns wiped out and although he cared nothing for that, he needed to see for himself. If the rumours were true, there would be peasants living in manor houses, taking over the land and thinking themselves as good as the nobility. Christopher believed that would be a bad thing, that it would disturb the whole social structure of the kingdom, and he wanted to see for himself if there was any truth in the stories.

  He set out early one morning, alone with his thoughts, and passed many deserted villages, some with rotting corpses still lying in the street. The towns were mostly empty, although there were a few survivors. He wore a mask over his face and stayed mounted, and as he made enquiries he learned the people who survived had without exception had buboes which burst, releasing the poison from their bodies.

  The people who fell ill with no buboes did not survive. They had the disease in their blood and in their lungs, but there was hope for those with the swellings. He learned as well that the disease had not yet departed, that it was still virulent closer to London and people could not afford to drop their guard just yet.

  The empty fields and houses he passed made him shiver. What was going to happen to the estates with no one left alive to tend them, no tenants left to farm them? He noted that stables stood open, barns the same, and knew at once that some of the people had used their fading strength to release all the animals to fend for themselves. And his first thought was that Felice would approve of that, Felice would be pleased. She would worry about the animals, if only he had not killed her.

  Eventually he came to his own manor house at Shepton. He knew what he would find here, emptiness, mounds of earth beneath one of which his sweet wife lie feeding the worms with her rotting remains. He caught back a sob, decided to ride past and not go near the place; he would not be able to bear it. But he recalled the corpse he had seen in the church porch on his last visit and noticed its absence. He drew slowly closer to the churchyard to where the open trench had been filled in.

  Someone had been here, someone had taken the trouble amid this chaos, to visit and cover the dead. He knew at once that made no sense, that no one would go that close for fear of the sickness. There was only one sensible explanation and that was that someone was living in the house. It may be some homeless soul, come to seek shelter, and Christopher would have no objection to that, but he needed to know just the same.

  He turned his horse and rode reluctantly toward the manor house.

  ***

  Another pauper's Christmas came and went and Felice began to feel more secure in her isolation, although she felt a little guilty that she was isolating these loyal servants along with her.

  "You must not concern yourself with that, My Lady," Dennis told her. "We are happy to be here with you. Lord Christopher is a fool who knows not what he is throwing away."

  Felice looked at him sharply, knowing she should scold him for such a remark, but feeling pleased just the same.

  "Forgive me, My Lady," he said quickly. "I have no right to criticise my betters, and perhaps being here has made me forget my place. But I stand by what I said, just the same."

  "Thank you, Dennis," she said softly. "I am grateful. I wish I could give you some sort of guarantee of what the future might hold, but I cannot. We will have to take each day as it comes and pray for God's mercy."

  Felice spent an afternoon searching the whole village for any supplies they may have missed. In the abandoned steward's house she looked about nervously, half afraid there might be some remnant of the disease waiting to pounce, or even some ghosts of the villagers still here. There was a cold chill in the air and it felt like snow. Thick dust covered the sparse, roughly built furnishings. That familiar scuttling of the rats was the only sound but she forced herself to continue her search, looking for anything they might make use of, anything at all.

  Eventually, she found some sewing materials. Her little Lady Rose was growing rapidly and she wanted so much to see her in pretty clothes befitting her rank, but home made dresses put together from some of Felice's own gowns would have to do.

  The child was crawling now, just beginning to pull herself up and take notice and she looked adorable in a little pink satin frock Felice had made from a gown of her own. She wondered what the future held for Lady Rose, now they had nothing, now the child's father thought them all dead. She would never grow to have the things for which the daughter of an Earl was entitled, that was for sure. There would be no illustrious marriage, no carefully thought out future with the best of everything, that was for sure. Was that a sacrifice Felice was willing to make? If she went home to Waterford Castle so that her child could have all those things, that child would grow up without a mother.

  She was sewing in the window seat, finishing a little frock for the baby from one of her own petticoats. Rose was with her, trying clumsily to pull herself up and reach out for her mother, who smiled fondly.

  The pair were lost in their own occupations and heard nothing of the approaching horse, had no idea there was anyone else in the room with them.

  Daisy was outside, picking some vegetables for their evening meal. The voice made her heart jump painfully and she spun around in horror to see Lord Christopher standing in the doorway, staring at her as though she were a ghost.

  ***

  Christopher dismounted and tied his horse to a tree. Someone was inside the house, that was obvious. Smoke came from the chimney and he could see movement inside, where some of the shutters were open.

  He had no idea what or who he would find inside, but he covered his face lest there were more plague victims. It was possible the house was the only place left for them to go and they might have left the village and brought the disease with them.

  An atmosphere of warmth hung in the air, the warmth of a house which is occupied and he could smell smoke from the burning l
ogs. Someone had made themselves comfortable in his house and he would have to decide whether to allow them to stay.

  Felice would let them stay. She would tell him they were not as fortunate as him and he should allow an empty house to be used to help them. Yes, he would allow them to stay. Felice would want that.

  He took a step inside the hall and stopped. Seated in the window was one of those damned apparitions he had been seeing everywhere. He squeezed his eyes shut, knowing it would be gone when he opened them or whoever the woman was, she would cease to look like his wife.

  But she did not disappear and his heart began to race. Was this really her ghost, come to chastise him? Or to forgive him? But she certainly looked solid enough. It was Felice, alive and well, not rotting in some unmarked grave.

  He stopped himself from running to her and snatching her up into his arms. He was sure that if he did she would disintegrate and leave him with nothing. He had to be sure.

  ***

  "Felice?"

  Her first thought was that her child was in danger and she quickly scooped her up into her arms. She stepped back, away from him, her eyes wide and frightened. What was he doing back here? Someone must have given her away, someone must have seen her and reported back to him. Why else would he come when he believed them all dead of the pestilence?

  "You are alive?" He asked in a bewildered tone.

  She drew a deep breath, summoning all her courage to reply.

  "I am sorry to disappoint you," she answered defiantly, wondering how she could get the servants in here, how she could call to them to take her child away to safety.

  She began to tremble, so much so she was afraid she might drop the little girl, and that fear made her clutch the baby tighter. Rose began to squirm, trying to loosen her mother’s grip, and Felice kissed her cheek in an attempt to soothe her.

  Christopher frowned and shook his head then took three long strides to stand before her. She took another step back, then another when he kept coming, holding the child ever tighter. He stopped at last and she turned to the side, still convinced she needed to protect her little daughter, that he would steal her away as he had her son.